OK, I'm scared. My cruiser had to sit for a week and a half, and when I went to start it today it was dead. No problem. I hooked up another car to jump it and let it sit for a few. Went inside and when I came back out there was smoke coming out of the engine. A wire that was taped in with the positive connection had fried itself right in half. This has never happened before, and I have had to jump it before. I hooked it back up to see what would happen then saw smoke coming out of the igniter assembly black box, so I unhooked the cables quickly. The screws on the igniter assembly were solid, so they just stripped trying to take them out. Am I screwed? What could this be?

me thinks you got a short! the little burnt wire might be the fusable link should be. maybe the po replaced what should have been a fuse to protect the rest of the system from exactly what happened. dunno where to start, but you should get a decent meter and check all of those wires for ground and stuff. maybe your voltage regulator is hosed and is draining your battery (hence the difficulty in starting) and possibly over regulating the current to the charging system, frying the wires. if your coil/igniter is shot, i got one in the garage.

Bill

everyone agree then?

Originally posted by 22_pilot
everyone agree then?

Sure ;)

Actually it could still be an number of different things...but I would defintly start by looking at all of the grounds and all of the connections at the ignitor and the battery, make sure they are all clean and free of corrosion. You can have a psuedo test done on your charging system at Autozone for free. If you talk with the right guy, they will also be able to check your systme for any drains... they won't be able to tell what is draining it but they can verify that it is being drained. If your charging system checks out on the machine, I would assume that your regulator is ok and that you need to replace the fusible link and concentrate on the ignitor. See if it was destroyed or not.

When you gonna come get that top? :D